I read on the website of the Quebec National Police Institute that new insignias worn by staff and students were introduced in 2012 to bring them in line with those worn by the various quebec municipal police forces.

Although I haven't been able to find the piece of legislation that introduced the new standard, checking pictures of officers taken in 2012 or since do indeed show that they have been standardised (The SQ kept its insignias and the SPVM is a special case).

The new insignias appear to be inspired by both the SQ (sergent to inspecteur-chef) and the SPVM ones (directeurs).

As mentioned, the SPVM is a special case. The service kept it's insignias so that instead of stripes grouping, it uses solid ones meaning that they appear as wide and thin stripes (the later are used by the sergent, lieutenant and commandant) making them look like the unification-era Canadian Armed Forces ones. It also has the additional ranks of commandant (1 thin stripe between 2 wide stripes) and Assistant-Directeur (1 fleur-de-lys below crossed sword and scabard with a SPVM logo) due to it's size. This explain why smaller services do not have a one fleur-de-lys directeur rank.

Some of the services also have variants for the directors insignias with the crossed swords being crossed sword and scabard instead and also some services not using any sort of municipal logo above them.

Insignias are normaly worn on navy blue slides with the service name or acronym at the bottom except for the ceremonial uniform of some services on which they are sown directly on the shoulder flaps.